Page 71 of Anatomy of a Player

I laughed and lifted my head for a kiss, the light scratch of his beard tickling my skin and sending another wave of happiness through me. With a sigh, I dropped my head back on his shoulder.

The arm not around me was folded across his abs, and I reached out and traced the swirls of black on his forearm, which was quickly becoming one of my new favorite hobbies. When I reached the jagged scar on the underside—the one that he apparently got from boys being boys—I lingered on the rough puckered skin.

“You’re going to start asking questions, aren’t you?”

Crap. Was that a needy thing to do? But not holding back had worked in my favor several times tonight, so I hesitated to stop now.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” he said. “But first, you owe me a story or something that not many people know about you. I blab all my secrets to you, and I don’t know any of yours.”

Could I tell him that I was more than a sportswriter for the paper right now? That I did have a big story that might get me to where I wanted to be? “You know about how little I know about hockey, although thanks to you, that’s quickly changing…”

Here it was. The perfect opening…

But tonight had been so perfect. He’d told me it was okay if we disagreed and that I was opinionated, but I didn’t want to have a debate breaking out during our pillow talk. I’d tell him, I would. But for now, I wanted to stay in this nice, cozy place where he held me tight and everything was right with the world. So I went for my other secret, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know it, either.

“My mama used to be a beauty pageant queen—she even won the Miss Alabama title and competed in the Miss America Pageant. So when I was younger, she entered me into beauty pageants.”

“Like those creepy ones where they try to make the little girls look like dolls?” Hudson looked horrified by the idea, but then he worked to school his features. “Sorry. That came out wrong.”

“No, I get it—that’s why I usually don’t tell people. She wanted to enter me pretty much as soon as I could walk, but my daddy wouldn’t let her. I remember them fighting about it here and there, and with every passing year it came up more and more. When I was twelve, my daddy finally gave in, but only if it was whatIwanted. I wanted them to stop arguing more than anything, and at first it was fun, getting all dressed up and traveling around the state to compete. I’d always felt like my mom only tolerated me before, but suddenly she was showering me with attention. She was so happy working the circuit. Picking out the outfits, taking me to tanning appointments, gluing on eyelashes…”

I focused on the 718 inked in the middle of the corded lines that gave Hudson’s arm a bionic muscle sort of look. I hadn’t expected this to be so hard to get out, or the cold that rose up and took hold as I thought about the year that it stopped being fun at all. “The older I got, the more pressure there was, and a lot of the girls had been competing since they were five—the people involved seriously eat, breathe, and sleep pageants. When I was supposed to be practicing my walk and my dance routines, I’d readNational Geographicor get caught up in online articles instead.”

“There’s my brainiac,” he said, and warmth flooded me, chasing away the cold.

I looked up and found his eyes fixed on me. He reached out and wrapped a strand of my hair around his finger, the way he’d done the other day.

“Anyway, then my mama and I were the ones who started fighting. She wanted me to work out more, and to diet, because I was gaining weight—I told her it was called growing and developing boobs and a butt; she told me it was laziness. She even took me to a physical trainer and told him to find a way to work off my ‘enormous butt.’”

“Blasphemy,” Hudson said, moving his hand moving protectively over one cheek.

Suddenly the story didn’t seem as hard, and for the first time, I was glad the hours of lunges, squats, and cardio, followed by eating very little didn’t work. “Honestly, the pageant thing wasn’t all bad. I met a lot of nice girls who were focused on spreading the word about worthy causes, and I saw plenty of mothers who worked to keep it fun, and took their daughters out for ice cream, win or lose.”

That was probably partially to blame for my ice cream addiction. I’d wanted that kind of relationship with my mama, and since I couldn’t have it with her, I had it with Lyla. “While they were doing that, my mama was pointing out my flaws and telling me I needed to lose a dress size, and it started to wreck my self-esteem. Finally I told her I wanted out, but she told me we didn’t quit—we worked until we went home with a crown. So I went to my daddy. Sometimes I worry that the fight they had over that was what drove them far enough apart for her to want to leave him.”

I’d never confessed that to anyone, because I was too afraid it was true.

Hudson shook his head. “That’s bullshit. If she didn’t see how beautiful and smart and amazing you are, that’s her loss. She sounds like the type of person who’ll never really be happy.”

That was true. She was never satisfied with her own appearance or body, either. She was always seeking more, and never happy, even when she got it.

Hudson hugged me tighter and kissed my forehead. It was such a tender gesture from a guy I didn’t think I’d ever call tender. Tears pressed in on my eyes, trying to escape. I wasn’t sure if it was the emotion of telling the story, or how he’d responded, or all of it, but I refused to cry right now.

So I swallowed past my tight throat and then lifted my head and smiled at him. “Now, spill.”

“You’re relentless. Relentless, I tell you,” he said, shaking his head. Then he lifted the forearm in question. “Glass bottle.”

I waited for more, but he didn’t say anything. “Hello? I need more information than that. Where’s the rest of the story?”

“I just wanted to hear you beg first.”

I smacked his chest and he laughed. Slowly the humor drained from his face, and I wondered if I should tell him never mind. He’d told me so many sad stories, and it hurt my heart to think he might have more sad ones than happy ones.

“These punks tried to take my hockey gear,” he said. “It was so hard to get as it was, and Dane’s parents floated me the money I didn’t have, so I didn’t care that there was two of them and they were bigger than me. I held out my bag like I was going to give it to them, and when the guy reached for it, I swung with everything I had, knowing I needed to stun him long enough to take out the next guy and run. I hit him right in the throat and it worked—he stumbled backward gripping his neck and trying to catch his breath.

“The other guy had a forty, so he smashed it against the brick wall and came at me. Idiot looked like he’d watched too many bar fights in movies.”

Judging from the jagged scar, the move was more effective than I wanted it to be.

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